Legal document concerning an enslaved woman named Zaire in Jamaica

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

Two handwritten depositions from a court case, Valdec v. Gravier in Kingston, Jamaica. Document a is Nicholas Charles Van Eeckhout’s deposition and b is a deposition given by an unidentified person with the surname of Gravier who appears to be the defendant. It appears that Doctor M. Joubert sold an enslaved woman, Zaire to Marie Anne Valdec when the British entered Port-au-Prince, Haiti during the Haitian Revolution. After this English invasion, it seems that Zaire went missing. She may have been sold to an American Captain who took her to Jamaica, or she may have ended up in Havana, Cuba. The two statements given on these documents relate to the same events however the accounts of the events differ. The first document (a) is signed at the bottom by Nicholas Charles Van Eeckhout. The back of the document has the filing notes for the case, entitled [Valdec v Gravier].

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